Cricket is one of the sports closest to my heart, and over the last 12 months my love for cricket has grown even more. With the recent victory down under and with the England team now fitting for the number one spot off India, now has never been a better time to get into cricket.
We have a young and hungry team, growing in experienced with every match played. Australia have lead the rankings for too many years, and now it’s The Poms time to shine! With the Barmy Army in full force every match, I really think that England could dominate all forms of the game in the next few years.
My local team are Essex CCC and aren’t a bad side, with England representatives in Alistair Cook, Ravi Bopara and Owais Shah and other international players in the squad. I try and get along to as many matches as possible, but is not normally that many. The T20 games are always a good night out, and I feel that the whole introduction of the T20 game has really helped to increase the popularity of cricket.
I have been very blessed to have witnessed some great cricketing sights in my life. The first of those is to see Essex CCC play warm up games against the likes of New Zealand, India and the West Indies where I have seen some great players play, most notably Sachin Tendulkar considered to be one of the best batman to have ever played.
In December 2010 England were out in Australia playing in one of the biggest and most fiercely contested test series played anywhere in the world. I happened to be on holiday out in Oz at the same time and was lucky enough to have tickets to one of the test matches. This test match was day one, of the third test at the mighty MCG. With the series tied at 1-1, this was a crucial match and turned out to be one for the record books. A day I will remember for the rest of my life, with Australia being swept aside for a mere 96 runs and then Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook getting a unbeaten score of 160. This was one of the best days cricket England have ever had, against our biggest rivals, on the biggest stage of cricket! England then went on to win the test, and then the series 3-1.
